


One of the Drunks

by RunMarmiteRun



Category: Zombies Run!
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-01
Updated: 2019-06-01
Packaged: 2020-04-05 18:52:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19046335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RunMarmiteRun/pseuds/RunMarmiteRun
Summary: We say goodbye...but do we really?  You lose people, and parts of yourself, along the way, but some things remain constant.





	One of the Drunks

My feet pound on the pavement. I hear the voice in my ear. “So, uh, if you turn left down that street up ahead, I think...no, wait, that’s marmite on the page, don’t turn there. Next one up, that’s the turn.” I shrugged and kept on. Sam always seemed slightly distracted but he usually knew what he was doing. The thing was, he cared. He cared too much. That night, that night when I had listened for his voice guiding me in to the gates. I was torn and exhausted. Now I was amazed at how far I could just keep running, putting one foot in front of the other. When everything had first happened I’d been like any other raw recruit, barely any training. I’d lied to get into the Army at all. One foot in front of the other. “Here Five, make that turn, uh, should be some sort of shop with random sports equipment coming up, Janine was asking if you could salvage anything from there.”

I turned, one foot in front of the other. I did some things automatically now. I sometimes missed speaking but in an odd way I didn’t. I missed singing though. I would hear other people singing sometimes, snatched of songs here and there. Ed hummed constantly when he was working, generally very badly, but absentmindedly. X had sung in the showers. One foot in front of the other. X was gone now. She’d been someone who had tried so hard to help me. She had told Maxine and 36 about the epilepsy. Maxine had known that she’d run out of medication nearly two months before the battle but had been running and eating just meat and next to no carbohydrates to try to manage it, a cure from the 1920s apparently plus case studies of heavy exercise reducing seizures. Anything in the apocalypse I suppose. But I hadn’t known that she kept telling me I could be normal was partly because she was living knowing she could die anytime. One foot in front of the other. “Five? There’s some activity coming in on the scanners, you’d best hurry.” Then, softer, “I need you to come home. No risks today, please. You’re out there on your own.” There he was. I couldn’t get him out of my head. The problem was I didn’t want this to be some sort of strange Stockholm syndrome for us. I mean, Archie...I had rolled my eyes when she started flirting with Jamie but the part of me that I hadn’t locked away was a little jealous. To be carefree enough to flirt...and Sam, well...he was shy and nerdy and all the things I was before. I didn’t know who I was now, though. One foot in front of the other.

Alice. That’s the other thing. The unspoken shadow between us. In more ways than me just literally not being able to speak. I mean, the other thing is, what if...well, I’d seen pictures. She had been a sweet, lithe girl. Physically, I couldn’t possibly compare. My left side is a mass of scars, running burn marks and I am pretty certain my neck has some bits of shrapnel embedded in it. Not to mention the scars from before everything happened. The nice thing about the helo crash is it covered some of my other damage. Oddly enough the tattoo I’d gotten was still fine - it was on my right shoulder and the tree of life had stayed clear through all of this. One foot in front of the other.

I ran. I heard Sam telling me to turn right, and followed his voice. Up the ladder. I felt the heavy pack slip a little, and automatically tightened the strap. The chafing cut into my neck and shoulder but I just ignored it and kept moving. One foot in front of the other. “Doing great, Five - you’ve lost all but three of them, and they’re, oh, about 50 yards behind you now. Keep going the speed you’re going and head home, maybe we can lose them on the way.

I keep running. Only three I could stop and fight but I won’t. Not today. I’m getting that feeling again. As I put one foot in front of the other, listening to Sam’s voice, I realize again that I’m still alive and that I have a home to go to. Maybe it’s not the one I would have thought, but it’s there. One foot in front of the other.

Here are the gates. I’ve made it. I’m red, I’m sweating. I gather the last of my energy and push myself through. “Welcome home, Five. Come see me when you’ve rested? I found a copy of a third edition campaign we can look through and you can help me design a campaign for next week if you like.” 

I smile. Another day I’m alive. I twist the ring I found lying in the gutter. It’s a cheap copy of the one ring. Seems right, though. I wonder if I’m the one who is supposed to carry it, and if like I’m the story I’ll end up needing a Sam to help me make that final effort to defeat the darkness?


End file.
